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20s is a period of high cultural change between modernists and
traditionalists
What were its cultural themes?
How did Republicans shape the national political culture?
What sociocultural changes lead to the rise of the "New Woman" and the
"Sexual Revolution"
How did the consumer culture create an unhealthy economy?
F Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby/This Side of Paradise
- Worked feverishly because he desperately wanted to be a writer but his
parents, girlfriend believed he had no prospects in it.
- Almost autobiographical about love and greed
- Flapper = more independent young woman
- About post-war youths' carpe diem, gratification, mortality
1920s were modern: they developed consumerist (credit-based) attitudes.
- Advertising
- Personal pleasure were encouraged
- Disillusioned
Woodrow Wilson not reelected because sweeping reforms were disbelieved.
Republican leadership panders to the everyman focused inward. (1920)
- "Likable mediocrity": Warren G Harding
- Limited abilities, anti-Woodrow Wilson, anti-internationalist.
"America First"
- But he's from a key state and "looks presidential."
- Terrible speechwriter; "first president to hire a full-time
speechwriter"
- Farmers, liberal intellectuals, religious fundamentals believed
they were discriminated by the war.
- Readily defeats Democrat alternative (16M to 9M) James Cox.
- Ignorant "plain fellow"
- Alcohol, hosted poker games, tobacco, adulterer
- Incredibly insecure about his inabilities despite his outward
appearance
"Should never have been here [in the Oval Office]"
- Andrew Mellon, 3rd richest man, develops Mellon Plan
Proposes huge tax rate reductions believing they forced the
wealthy to keep their money tied up. (top bracket at 73%)
- Unemployment falls
- Taxes dive
- Mired in scandal: Director of Veterans Bureau stole medical
hospital supplies. Other director let prohibition be flouted.
- Teapot Dome Scandal
- Albert Fall was deeply indebted, 8 years overdue on taxes
- Began selling oil to close friends (petroleum exec)
- Took $4M in bribes from an oil tycoon
- First official to serve time for his position.
- Warren G Harding dies of food poisoning.
- Succeeded by VP Calvin Coolidge
Coolidge Administration
- Puritanical morals, focused on minimal regulation & capitalism.
- Greatest accomplishment was "minding my own business."
- 12 hours of sleep AND a nap.
- Limited regulation of business and industry
- Reelected in 1924
- Surging economy taken as endorsement of deregulation
Henry Ford and the Age of the Automobile
- "Machine age" = modernity
- Exponential growth up to 8 million cars in America
- Henry Ford in 1903 built cars for the masses (democratization)
- Model-T only $4K in modern dollars
- Margins low, wages high
- 1920: America 2/3 of oil production
- 1930: 10% of Americans work with cars
- Assembly line made production very efficient
- Freed the American people: urban and rural areas became less disparate
Sigmund Freud and the Sexual Revolution
- "Frank treatment of sex," especially at colleges
- Sigmund Freud wanted to legitimize psychological field
- Reckless, unethical scientist: manipulated data, false assertions
- Manipulated information to provide narrative about ego, super-ego,
id, repression, and sexuality.
- Anti-religious. Wanted psychological analysis to take its role
- Cocaine-addicted.
- Writes "Interpretations of Dreams" that calls subconscious a
roiling snakepit of repressed desires and urges.
- "True Confessions" magazine focuses on Freud-inspired narratives.
- Sensual freedom and feisty independence of women.
- Talk Therapy popularized to help young people realize their hidden
selves.
- Freud pushed narratives supporting sex
- Simplified versions claimed that all sexual activity was good
Birth Control
- Christians viewed it as an affront to God's will
- Margaret Sanger, nurse and midwife, saw birth control as a solution to
large families' poverty, amateur abortions, etc.
- Socialist party member
- Promotes birth control instead of women's suffrage
- *The Woman Rebel* promotes contraception, women's rights, suffrage
- Arrested but released
- Opens world's first birth control clinic, shut down by police.
- Endorses sterilization for the mentally incompetent and people
with hereditary conditions
- 1937, SC allows physicians to distribute contraception
- Dies in 1966 at 87
The New Woman
- Margaret Sanger is a symbol of the flapper
- Zelda, F Scott's girlfriend, is a flapper that Scott calls her
irresponsible and reckless
- Drank, does "crazy things"
- Women discouraged from attending coed colleges by doctors purporting
it would reduce blood to their ovaries
- Women returned somewhat to their old roles as homemakers
- Household machines and supermarkets' year-round access to meats and
vegetables meant that advertisers targeted women for consumerism.
- Domestic woman was "born to shop"
- Belief that "buying products would make you feel good"
- Encouraged by advertisers to keep buying to keep factories going
- Postwar relaxation, frugality during war replaced by wastefulness
- "Buy now, pay later": credit, installment plans invented.
*The Theory of the Leisure Class* (1898) by Thorstein Veblen
- Conspicuous Consumption
- Americans wanted to get rich, and do it with little effort
- Success and status measured in terms of material wealth
- Brings up consumer debt. 75% of new car purchases on installments.
Less savings and more spending was damaging during the Great Depression.
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